My expectations for Writing for Engineering before the course began were different than what I experienced during the course. Initially, I assumed that the difficult part of the class would be having to obsess over minute formatting details. I imagined that I would learn some sort of hyper-specific writing style that would require perfect precision. However, I found the class to be quite the opposite. Though I did practice APA style, I quickly realized that often, much of a paper’s formatting decisions are left to the writer. This surprised me, and I was initially hesitant to stray from basic conventions because I didn’t want to misuse anything. Eventually, I let myself explore different features like footnotes and sub-headings. This taught me the essential lesson that being a good communicator is not just one’s ability to perfectly replicate a style, but the ability to be strategic to use appropriate, clear formatting in various situations. For example, the lab report was very formulaic so there weren’t many style decisions to be made for that assignment. It was a good first piece because I practiced the strict application of APA format before transitioning to projects with more structural freedom. Unlike the lab report, the project proposal had no set template to follow, so its formatting was almost entirely up to me as a writer to decide. In addition to the content itself, my writing process now includes considering how to best convey information structurally.

My writing process hasn’t changed so much in form, but drastically in mindset. More specifically, learning the importance of having an intended audience changed my writing mindset quite a bit. When I write, I begin by doing some cursory background research, then making a very rough draft. My first drafts are grammatically incorrect and borderline incoherent, but it helps to lay out some ideas. From the first draft I gradually develop a more polished second draft, doing more research along the way if necessary. This course introduced a new first step to this process, which is considering the intended audience. The technical description was where I applied this the most. Even before making my messy first draft, I considered for whom I was writing so I knew what level of information to jot down. This is a much better method than doing it retrospectively because it saves time and makes the work more cohesive. Keeping the intended audience in mind for the technical description taught me that it is good to exclude some information depending on who your audience is. Putting too much detail is bad practice both when writing to engineers and to consumers. This corresponds directly with the following course objective: “identify the audiences who will read your writing — and work to understand them.”

The project proposal achieved the course objective: “Study and practice various genres and modes of expression (visual and oral, included) to explore strong writing across science contexts and beyond.” because it relied heavily on visuals to convey information, and our presentation was an oral delivery of the information. Each of our assignments had a peer-review session, which helped me fix issues that I didn’t catch by rereading my own work. This fulfilled the course objective of “Collaborate with your classmates on writing projects: research papers, in-class presentations, and peer reviews.” Through the lab report, I practiced “summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, analyzing, synthesizing, and citing sources.” by explaining the procedure from the video in my own words and coming up with a discussion section where I interpreted the results using outside information. Using formatting to my advantage and always writing towards an intended audience are the takeaways from this course that most impacted my writing. Knowing how to write a lab report will serve me well in the future, as labs will be common in my future courses. The collaborative writing strategies learned will also be helpful for both classroom group projects and in my career, which will undoubtably include working with a team.